Category Archives: Flowers and Blooms

I take pictures all the time. There are days when I devote an entire day to taking the various pictures I would always have wanted to at another – earlier – time. Yes, this means I have some regrets I don’t want to revisit again regarding projects I have done – projects where I neglected to take the time to snap simple pictures taken in progress or at the completion of hundreds of wonderful landscapes. Therefore, the preciousness of those I did take is somewhat off the charts, as average as they may be. They were a unique point in time, which is the signal virtue of all photography.

The Digital Age changed me. I fully admit to an absolute egotistical surge of pride when I realize I can have one of these cameras automatically adjust and snap pictures as if I were an actual pro. Cheating can be fun, after all!

Truthfully, I enjoy writing as much as I enjoy anything at all. Being relatively new to “full time” writing and thinking, I am still somewhat in the wash of wonder at the challenges of arranging unique thoughts and images – sometimes so thrilling when I stop and contemplate it all. When I can combine these two avocations in a form such as this blog, it’s a true slice of heaven for me. Above and below, I’ll feature some of my personal favorite general images – later, not all mine – a few of them focusing on projects and others on the representative unique specialness of the pictures themselves. As most people who follow this blog know, I have special affinities for certain plants and trees: Rhododendrons are a massive Champion for me, as are Roses and Dogwood Trees.

The simple entertaining luxury of Dogwoods as well as their amazing variety make the Kentucky countryside redolent and busy with blooms galore during Spring times such as this one now passing. The natural woods themselves feature these natives in a stunning natural glamour – especially poignant when combined with foreground landscaping planning such as this perspective from the grounds at Bernheim Forest.

What is a Dogwood Spectacular?

This………

Rhodies –

’nuff said 😉

One more:

Mmmmm, good enough to eat. But don’t. Rhododendron blooms are poisonous.

Projects:

One of my all time favorite projects revolved around this huge 10 acre plot we landscaped for a contractor for whom we did much other work as well. Of course this is common in construction as persons who award contracts learn more about those laboring for their benefit. Readers will be familiar with some of these:

From above:

Telephone call!! Burning Man on the line!

Seems my secretary has a hot thought!!!

She’s on fire!! 😉

I’m wearing the reader out with pictures. I’ll break for now and revisit this topic soon.

In three hours, I board a plane for Portland, yet again. Thence to San Diego to see my daughter. Life be’s good.

This has been a somewhat epic Spring – early by a month, enticing as all get-out with the proliferation of blooming things as well as some equally unseasonable scents to go with the flowers. I had forgotten how great Kentucky can smell.

(enlarge pictures by left-clicking) Please 😉

I can’t get enough of these gorgeous blooms.

This dogwood explains its design, set next to this white home and co-existing with such an enhancing flowering.

More of the Native Pinks, the Dogwoods have truly been the stars of the local show for my money.

Here, once again, is Nature’s rendition of a chaotic romp set in little Audubon Park in Louisville.

This is pretty much the butt-kickingest Redbud I’ve seen so far.

The “roadside look” I always enjoy. These blooming things show up in all the local forests, creating a lacy framework around which the visible harbingers of Spring group. Notice too all the super-young leaves on local trees as they grow and re-color to their deeper greens as the season progresses.

Inside the local neighborhood, things are picking up serious steam as well.

This Kwanzan Cherry tree does its usual double-blooming trick, increasing the weight on those branches by about 10 times.

It’s gone a little crazy here. This bizarre early Spring is a month early which is not to say I am crying tears of Rage over it. That would be laughingly inaccurate. 😉

We took a small trip to Bernheim Woods because that’s where one goes to find out what the best things in this world are – and Bernheim delivered. Nor is this to say I did not have a hallucinating great time walking my local ville and even Owensboro, where I spent time with two wonderful people, one my very original old flame the other my most influential adult growing up. I could have easily and happily spent more time with each but I also left each feeling refreshed and soulful. And wanting more.

(enlarge all images – and please do – by left clicking)

The colorful Crabapple grove below is one of Bernheim’s greatest tricks. They tend to mass blooming things in fabulous arrays of sumptuousness for the eyes (and nose!) as the flowering Crabapples below testify.

It was further up the car-directed trails where my Ma and I were most driven to visit – all curious about what the Forest Canopy Walk would offer. The little succulent lime green leaves of Kentucky Spring are just trotting out some muscular leaf activity on these forests of crazily- and widely- mixed species.

The view over the edge goes forever, with beautiful punctuations of subtle colors which you must see to really understand. Great forest scents are out, with both the native Dogwoods and Redbuds pushing blooms like hot dog salesmen in the Manhattan business district.

I absolutely adore the iron work on this forest canopy walk. Simple, safe but still somehow visually arresting, the Bernheim Forest has themselves an absolute feature with this outstanding edifice.

This is my Mother, just before she jumped. Yes, I tried “talking her down” – I mean, I watched Dirty Harry – but she was having too much fun. I’ll probably miss her.

It’s actually a long way down and, no, she didn’t jump. I was just funnin’.

Notice my accent changing?

But it is the distant views that bring home the season like few other images. One can see Winter still has the slightest grip on some dubious trees, a little reluctant to bust out like their neighbors.

Lacy blooms adorn these dense hardwood forests like gorgeous necklaces around the loved ones nearby. Shared in scent, color and texture, the very depth of Nature’s Beauty shows off here in 360 degrees of fulfillment, delicately and yet boldly.

The subtle graces of these stunningly rich Spring forest views reveal themselves to a delighted populace who universally speak of and enjoy these forests with pride and a very real Kentucky wonder.

Almost diabolical in their tactics, planners of this luscious resource obviously take a perverse pride in augmenting these forests views with sneaky Fuschia coloring in their foregrounds, a trick of designing which never fails to absolutely hypnotize the rest of us idiots with a smiling pleasure. Honestly, this view is outrageous. Please enlarge.

Truth is, Mom and I caught more than one mere day’s worth of glory out there. For example, when we came back to town, we tripped over to Audubon Park where various crazy neighborhoods host a Dogwood Festival each year.

Everybody loves blooms. By far my most popular posts are of blooms and blooming processes. I mean, I could talk all day about the in’s and out’s of landscape design and installation issues, speak about the people I have worked for – those who have worked for me – my family, your family, all the rest and still, the posts everyone loves most are of flowers.

….and………so without further ado, culled from the archives and seeing the light of day for the first times……… Who knew Oregon Grape could look like this?

(enlarge any image by left clicking – maybe even twice for incredible detail)

Double-blooming Kwanzan Cherries are among my personal favorite Spring-blooming ornamentals. The sheer profuseness of their blooms is mesmerizing and they can actually get pretty sizable.

This bad boy is 30 feet high and even wider.

This otherwise simple, middle and working-class suburban neighborhood in Gresham, Oregon – a suburb of Portland – simply took the best of what Portland’s nurseries offered, made people dig a bunch of hard-fought holes on their own and then watch their futures unfold in a sublime bit of uncoordinated ‘hyper coordination’. Just check the various depths of colorful blooms as this tableau stretched on…….. These pictures really do want some enlargement to fully appreciate the colors and lushness of their settings.

The lowly and under-appreciated Sumac tree’s fresh and sprightly new leaves offer this gorgeous bloom for a truly gorgeous, radiant Springtime eye harvest:

Suburban Louisville, Kentucky has always benefited fabulously from hosting native Dogwood and Eastern Redbud trees, but the additions of other ornamentals such as Chinese Pears and the lower-lying Spirea and Viburnums of wide range, make for breath-taking tableaus of soothing and just uncommon beauty such as this Douglas Hills boulevard picture:

The fascination with Chinese Pears – especially inasmuch as they bloom so early, yields a feast of parkland which kick starts better weather with a nice and emphatic shove:

A natural filigree of lacy blooms and a caressing Nature adorn every Kentucky forest’s lime-green early Spring leaves with the beauty of native bloomers.

So we agree that Spring is special. I doubt anyone here argues the issue. And since we’re on the subject of blooms in general, let’s take a look at others – Roses, for example:

Here are 2 Rose Warriors, at their tasks as we speak!

Star Magnolias are another blooming winner……….like the Chinese Pears, they also come super early in the Spring –

Other noteworthy stuff………. A Wysteria poised in front of some sumptuous turn-of-the-Century housing in downtown Louisville…….

You can almost smell this Lilac where you sit…..

Any blog I get involved in will have some Rhododendrons – it’s as simple as that. Unreservedly……. these are my favorite blooms, this one mixed with some killer foreground Spirea